Year 8 Topic 1

1. Year 8 Topic 1 Who was the most successful Tudor monarch?

2. Henry VII • How to protect the kingdom from possible foreign enemies? • His eldest son Arthur married the Spanish Princess Catherine of Aragon. • His daughter Princess Margaret was married to King James IV of Scotland. • He kept the Welsh happy by passing new laws or ‘charters of freedom’. • How to keep the nobles under control so they don’t threaten the Tudor dynasty? • He married Princess Elizabeth from the House of York. • He defeated the Yorkists at the Battle of Stoke in 1487. • How to protect himself against ‘pretenders’ to the throne? • Lambert Simnel was put in the royal kitchens for pretending to be one of the Princes in the Tower! • He executed Perkin Warbeck in 1499 for leading a rebellion against him.

3. Henry VIII • How to deal with threat to the continuity Tudor dynasty? • Henry wanted a son to carry on the Tudor line, but Catharine of Aragon had given him one daughter • Henry wanted a divorce from his wife Catherine of Aragon. But divorce was no simple matter. The Catholic Church believed in marriage for life and refused to grant Henry a divorce, even though he was King. • This put Henry VIII in a difficult position. If he went ahead and announced that as King of England he was allowing himself a divorce,the pope could excommunicate him. • Henry went ahead with the Break from Rome and established the Anglican Church. • He destroyed many of England’s monasteries and used all the valuable ornaments, statues and even stained glass to make himself a huge profit. • This was a risky decision, and made the Pope furious. Henry had potentially risked England’s safety and relationship with the Catholic Church to get his own way.

4. Edward VI • How much did Edward change/how did he deal with threats? • To deal with the problem of Mary inheriting the throne Edward named Lord Dudley’s daughter in law, Lady Jane Seymour, a distant relative, as the next Queen. She was a Protestant. • In terms of solving religious problems Edward drastically changed the Church to be more Protestant. (Make sure you can remember some specific changes Edward made to the churches e.g. Book of Common Prayer 1549.) This pleased many but made him more unpopular with Catholics. • To deal with the Peasant Uprising John Dudley, Earl of Warwickshire and the Duke of Northumberland were called upon. These were powerful nobles that were able to stop the people revolting with their personal armies. Edward gave more power to nobles than they had had before which helped strengthen his position as a young, inexperienced king.

5. Mary I • How did Mary change England back to a Catholic country? How successful was she? • On Edward's death in 1553, Lady Jane Grey was briefly acclaimed queen. However, Mary had widespread popular support and within days made a triumphal entry into London. • Once queen, she was determined to re-impose Catholicism and marry Philip II of Spain. Neither policy was popular. Philip was Spanish and therefore distrusted, and many in England were now interested in the prosperity of the Protestant church, having received church lands and money after Henry dissolved the monasteries. • In 1554, Mary crushed a rebellion led by Sir Thomas Wyatt. Making the most of her advantage, she married Philip, pressed on with the restoration of Catholicism and revived the laws against heresy (death for going against Catholicism). • Over the next three years, hundreds of Protestants were burned at the stake. This provoked anger with Mary, anger deepened by an unsuccessful war against France which led to the loss of Calais, England's last possession in France, in January 1558. • Childless, sick and deserted by Philip, Mary died on 17 November 1558. Her hopes for a Catholic England died with her.

6. Elizabeth • How ‘golden’ was Elizabethan England? • Successes: • The beginnings of the British Empire through sea voyages and exploration. • The establishment of a stable and largely peaceful society in which the sciences and arts could flourish(Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Thomas Tallis) • Demonstrated clearly that women could rule successfully, and utilised intellectual skill and diplomacy rather than pure diplomatic/military force. • Failures (she had few ‘failures’ during her reign): • She had to reverse much of her earlier policy of religious toleration during her latter years as the Catholic-inspired plots against her began to thicken. • She never had children, so the Tudor line ended with her. (though whether this could be classed as a 'failure' is debatable!)

7. Websites • http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/zxnbr82 • http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/tudor-england/ • http://www.hrp.org.uk/palace-kids/discover/all-about-the-tudors/